But every pump also adds a new possible failure point. And if you have a catastrophic failure, one section of the pipe is destroyed and the entire system ceases to function.

Basically, the problem is that you're trying to make an environment that is dangerous to humans, then put humans into a safety capsule so you can fire them bullet-like through that dangerous environment.

...For starters, the radial thermal expansion of the steel tubes under direct sunlight will result in pipeline distortions between joints. And, over a 100km pipeline, the longitudinal thermal expansion could be as much as 50m, meaning that a huge number of flexible joints would have to be in place. With so many moving joints, over such a distance, all under vacuum: it’s a maintenance nightmare in the making....

...If you want to get an idea of how hard getting a good vacuum is over any length of tube, take a look at what the Large Hadron Collider facility has to do to get just under 27 km of tube at a good, hard vacuum. http://cds.cern.ch/record/455985/files/p291.pdf has more details about that than you could ever want....

The tunnel would be underground, so there should be no issues with the sun causing expansion problems. Like all the subways around the world that go under bodies of water we know how to monitor these water/air tight structures, and make sure there aren't problems. So no need for glass and steel you can use concrete to build the tunnels and build them big enough to let the little bit of surviving air flow around the train.

The StarTram uses a true Maglev not a bubble of air. Currently, maglev transport vehicles routinely run faster than 500 km/h. Put it in a vacuum tube and it is possible to run maglev at 1000s of km/h. poof friction problem solved.

It should be noted that the term vacuum doesn't mean 0PSI it can go up to 14 PSI. A concrete tube similar to what we use for drainage could handle either without issue. (as we do with tunnels under bodies of water) I'm not looking for anything showy here, I'm just looking for it to work.

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Gawdzilla Sama wrote:If you want to maintain a vacuum, just have more pumps than you need. 200% capacity perhaps. Then if HALF of the pumps suddenly fail you still have 100% of the evacuating capacity available. The pumps would be spaced appropriately along the line.

It doesn't have to be that strong of a vacuum. A torricellian vacuum is created by filling a tall glass container closed at one end with mercury, and then inverting the container into a bowl to contain the mercury. And with it being underground it's not like there will be a huge influx of air if there was a leak...

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It did occur to me overnight that substituting a real human being for the dummy in the car would have been productive. An eye witness for the price of a few sandwiches and a flask of coffee is good value in my eyes.

The eye witness ability would last only as long as the air supply. But I bet there would have been many volunteers. To be told your body would be the very first in Mars orbit would be enough to get any number of nut case suicidal volunteers.

Gord wrote:But every pump also adds a new possible failure point. And if you have a catastrophic failure, one section of the pipe is destroyed and the entire system ceases to function.

Basically, the problem is that you're trying to make an environment that is dangerous to humans, then put humans into a safety capsule so you can fire them bullet-like through that dangerous environment.

Poodle wrote:It did occur to me overnight that substituting a real human being for the dummy in the car would have been productive. An eye witness for the price of a few sandwiches and a flask of coffee is good value in my eyes.

Ha, ha. I only think to be careful about that word when typing the dry place. You could put Pledge on it.............

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OlegTheBatty wrote:It would have been more useful to launch Trump and enough close associates to make up the required test mass. Perhaps Musk could have sold it as "A launch into the Greatest Greatness ever Greated by the Greatest Greats."

There would have been much rejoicing.

And we know he only weighs 239 pounds so there's lot of extra room for other payloads.

Pyrrho wrote:Risking a billion-dollar payload on a test flight would have been a foolish thing to do.

Nanocraft that Hawkings and NASA wanted for alpha centauri cost roughly $200 each. So 100k would be like 500 of them sent in all sorts of directions out into space. I'm not getting where you believe this stuff cost billions. India built and sent a satellite into space for a total cost of under 100 million.

Okay, then risking a $100,000 payload would have been foolish.

It was a test flight.

A test flight that normally cost 6 million dollars to achieve what it achieved... Maybe 6 million isn't a big deal to waste to you, but that's not how I view 6 million..

It cost about $500 million to develop the rocket. Spending $6 million on the test is nothing.

Pyrrho wrote:Risking a billion-dollar payload on a test flight would have been a foolish thing to do.

Nanocraft that Hawkings and NASA wanted for alpha centauri cost roughly $200 each. So 100k would be like 500 of them sent in all sorts of directions out into space. I'm not getting where you believe this stuff cost billions. India built and sent a satellite into space for a total cost of under 100 million.

Okay, then risking a $100,000 payload would have been foolish.

It was a test flight.

A test flight that normally cost 6 million dollars to achieve what it achieved... Maybe 6 million isn't a big deal to waste to you, but that's not how I view 6 million..

It cost about $500 million to develop the rocket. Spending $6 million on the test is nothing.

Pyrrho wrote:Risking a billion-dollar payload on a test flight would have been a foolish thing to do.

Nanocraft that Hawkings and NASA wanted for alpha centauri cost roughly $200 each. So 100k would be like 500 of them sent in all sorts of directions out into space. I'm not getting where you believe this stuff cost billions. India built and sent a satellite into space for a total cost of under 100 million.

Okay, then risking a $100,000 payload would have been foolish.

It was a test flight.

A test flight that normally cost 6 million dollars to achieve what it achieved... Maybe 6 million isn't a big deal to waste to you, but that's not how I view 6 million..

It cost about $500 million to develop the rocket. Spending $6 million on the test is nothing.